In forming articles of apparel, it is often necessary to provide a finished slit, called a placket, which enables the wearer to more easily don and remove the garment. Among the more common uses of plackets in garments are at the neck, waist and sleeve cuff areas.
In forming plackets, a slit is first formed in the garment at the desired area, and then the edges of the slit are provided with finished edges to present a pleasing and closed appearance. Various methods are presently used to form the plackets.
One method is to provide the placket along a seam and provide enough material along each of the edges of the slit to enable each edge to be folded back and sewn to itself to form the finished overlapping portions closing the slit. However, the disadvantage to this method is that excess material must be provided along the seam which results in large amounts of waste material when cutting the garment parts from the base material.
A second method is to provide two separate pieces of material each folded and sewn to the garment along an edge of the slit so that the raw edges of the slit extend and lie within the folds of the placket-forming pieces, with the pieces overlapping each other to close the slit.
A third method is to provide a single piece of material which is folded on itself on a longitudinal direction and then is attached to the slit starting on one side at the open end of the slit and then proceeding up around the closed end of the slit and thence down the other side to the open end of the slit. The raw edges of the slit are placed between the folds of the placket material during the stitching, and the width of the fold is such as to form a closure for the slit.
In both the second and third methods, the material forming the placket has a portion disposed on each side of the garment. Further, each of those portions has its edge rolled under so that no raw edges of material are exposed. This results in not only having the rolled edges extending back across the placket opening, but also the garment material which lies within the placket forming material also extends across the placket opening. This creates greater bulk across the placket opening. Further, in the third method it is difficult to retain the fold in the placket material in the position at the closed end of the placket opening, and therefore it sometimes protrudes on the face side of the garment, giving an unsightly appearance.